Hot crossover buns

It's an odd thing, meeting someone whose blog you read. It's kind of like meeting a movie star, because you've been seeing their face for years but they don't know the first thing about you. So when it happens, for the first little while until you get your act together and understand that they're just people, you're somewhat starstruck and wobbly and not at all sure what to say. Or maybe that's just me.

Today I met Secret Agent Josephine (aka Brenda) and Bethany Actually, as well as Carrie of The Queen's Rambles. (And a little later Shanee, who sadly I hardly got to talk to at all, but she had a lovely daughter just a little older than Miss.) I've been reading Brenda's blog since she was pregnant with Bug and I was pregnant with Monkey. I've watched Bug grow and used her milestones to think, "Ooh, he'll be doing that in a couple of months" (completely erroneously, since she's a girl, so when she was turning paper pages by her first birthday, he was still munching on board books, and when she was singing the entire alphabet he was probably still calling me Daddy). I've been impressed by Brenda's lovely graphics and her wonderful art projects and amazing party-throwing skills and sighed over her photos of the beach for a long time, and there I was this afternoon having coffee and hanging out at a playground with her and the others as if I do this sort of thing all the time. And despite children who were constantly on the verge of falling off things that were much too high and hard for them to climb (Miss) and needing to go to the bathroom (the Other One), I had a really nice time, and also got to play pirates/sharks with Bug and Erik and blow giant bubbles with Annalie. Sadly, we had to run off too soon to a prior engagement, and of course it was just five minutes after Monkey had finally started playing with the other children. It is ever thus.

In totally unconnected news, Spring has sprung around here like a rabbit out of a trap. On Friday, to be precise, the blossoms came out and the magnolias bloomed and the daffodils came up, and now the weather is just gorgeous. So everyone went to the zoo yesterday. Everyone, plus us. And the orangutans were inspired by the delightful weather to get a bit frisky. We went into the Think Tank building, where the apes do their clever stuff, and found Mr Orang gyrating rhythmically on top of Mrs Orang, who was lying back and regarding the audience with a long-suffering expression reminiscent of one who thinks the sooner he's finished the sooner she can get back to the ironing, and is that a damp patch on the ceiling or just a shadow? Monkey - my Monkey, I mean - was fascinated to see the apes up so close, and sat and watched for quite a while. Then he asked me if orangutans have to pee, and if they have penises. I replied in the affirmative. After a little longer he said, "Why is that orangutan jumping up and down on that other orangutan?" At this point the male was hanging from a handily placed rope and really getting into it. We told him they were trying to make a baby orangutan. Happily, he didn't ask any more about the mechanics, because I think I might just have fallen down dead if I had had to go into further detail right there.

Then we moved on to the elephants, where Mr Elephant had his very long schlong out for a bit of an airing. Monkey was more interested in demanding ice cream at that point, so we didn't have to deal with that either. Ah, innocence.